Delays on M74 after dog 'drives' on to carriageway

Delays were caused on a busy stretch of the M74 motorway after reports of a dog "taking control of a tractor".

The incident - highlighted on Twitter by Traffic Scotland - took place at J13 at Abington, South Lanarkshire.

It later emerged that a sheepdog called Don, owned by farmer Tom Hamilton, had leaned on the controls of his utility vehicle, taking it on to the road.

Police and Mr Hamilton later recovered Don, who was unhurt, and the vehicle, from the central reservation.

Mr Hamilton told BBC Scotland that he was out on his off road pick up checking lambs in a field above the M74 near Abington.

Farmer relieved

As always he was accompanied by his Collie sheepdog Don, who was sitting beside him in the passenger seat. Don escaped with little more than a fright

While Mr Hamilton was examining a lamb he turned round to see the Gator utility vehicle crashing through the fence and heading down an embankment on to the northbound lane of the M74 with Don still sitting in it.

The vehicle stopped after hitting the central barrier, smashing the windscreen.

Mr Hamilton said he feared that he had not pulled the handbrake properly and was extremely relieved that no drivers were hurt.

The farmer was also relieved that Don escaped with little more than a fright.

The episode caused a stir on social media when it was reported by Traffic Scotland at about 08:45 on Wednesday.

Dog puns

The transport body tweeted: "M74 (N) J13-RTC due to dog taking control of tractor... nope, not joking. Farmer and police at scene, vehicle in central res."

Shortly afterwards Traffic Scotland provided the update: "M74 (N) at J13 - Route is clear from earlier incident and dog is fine. Has to be the weirdest thing we have ever reported! No delays in area."

Police said the vehicle had gone through a fence near the motorway at about 08:15.

The incident led to plenty of dog puns as people responded to Traffic Scotland's tweets.

Zebras escape pen to run loose in Brussels, Belgium

Brussels residents got the shock of their lives when they looked out of
their windows earlier today after three zebras escaped from their pen in
Koningslo near Vilvoorde. The zebras caused considerable disruption on
the roads, as you can imagine, but fortunately the animals were swiftly
recaptured, first one, and then the other two.

The zebras escaped from Koningslo, south-west of Vilvoorde and
immediately made for Schaarbeek before arriving at the City of Brussels.

In an impressive effort, police, fire services and animal welfare
officers were mobilised to ensure the animals could be caught, but this
turned out to be more difficult than initially thought.Police actually had to chase the animals in a police van for several kilometres, as these proved quite fast.

WATCH: Zebras On the Loose Galloped Through Brussels!

Story comes to an end in Vilvoorde City

Having headed south towards Brussels initially, the animals changed
their minds and returned to Vilvoorde. One of them was caught at the
Schaarbeeklei, while the other two enjoyed their liberty just a bit
longer, until they got stuck in a private parking lot that could be
closed with a gate. This was in the centre of Vilvoorde in Cyriel Buysse
Street, named after the famous Flemish writer. A vet was called to the
scene to calm down the animals.

Originally, four zebras had escaped, but one could be
caught very quickly in a nearby park. The owner said that he installed
two fences around his zebra farm (called Ranch Ste Ann), but one fence
was not ready yet after renovation works. The animals managed to squeeze through a hole in the first fence. - Deredactie.

Take this cage and shove it: Wolverine at Newark Airport is an unwilling rider

If there were a manual for transporting wolverines, Rule No. 1 would
probably go something like this: Make sure the wolverine cannot get out
of the cage.

At Newark Liberty International Airport on Tuesday, it became clear that this precaution had not been taken.

A 40-pound male wolverine named Kasper was being shipped from a zoo in
Norway to a conservation park in Alaska. At around 3:30 p.m., he arrived
in Newark to change planes and go through United States Customs.

It was there that the animal's handler, Sarah Howard, noticed there was a hole in Kasper's cage.

"His head was sticking out," said Ms. Howard, a curator for the
Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center, the wolverine's intended new home.
She had flown to Newark to meet him.

The cage was made of metal, said Joseph Pentangelo, a spokesman
for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs the
airport. "It's believed he chewed a hole in it."

Wolverines, which look kind of like small bears but are
actually the largest members of the weasel family, are legendarily
vicious. With long, sharp teeth, they have been known to kill animals
many times their size, including caribou and white-tailed deer.

Kasper remained in his cage, but Ms. Howard was alarmed.

"She said it was growling and stuff like that,but
maybe they do that all the time, walk around and make noise," Mike
Miller, executive director of the conservation center, said.

A wildlife officer and a Port Authority police officer were summoned to Terminal C.

The cage was carefully placed in a transport van, Mr. Pentangelo said,
"just to add another level of security, so that the wolverine wasn't a
threat to himself or the public."

A new, uncompromised cage was procured from the Bronx Zoo, as was a wild
animal veterinarian. The cages were put face to face and Kasper was
encouraged to walk into the new one.

"He balked," Mr. Pentangelo said. "He did not want to go. He made it very clear."

The veterinarian administered a shot of ketamine, a tranquilizer. Kasper
dropped off to sleep. The cage transfer was accomplished. And after an
overnight stay at Terminal C, Kasper resumed his journey.

Kristiansand Zoo in Norway, which had sent Kasper, was closed on
Wednesday evening when a reporter called, and no one there could be
reached.

A decent life awaits Kasper in Alaska, where the conservation center
sits on a 170-acre spread in the mountains about an hour southeast of
Anchorage, in Portage.

He will get three acres, at least. That is not a lot by wolverine
standards — they can range over 200 square miles — but it is enough to
roam around.

And if all goes well, Mr. Miller said, he will have a mate.

"There's another facility, in Sweden, that is sending us a female," he said. - New York Times.

Baby loses half her face as stray dog enters house and attacks in Haimen, China

Recovering from surgery: Little Qingqing, who is just ten weeks old, has bandages around her damaged face

A baby girl has been badly disfigured in a dog attack at home after her
parents left her by herself while they worked in nearby fields.

Ten-week-old Qingqing is currently in a critical condition in hospital
in eastern China, following emergency surgery to repair her mauled face.

Her mother told the People's Daily Online: 'We left after our baby girl fell asleep. Who knew this would happen?'

The woman, named only as Ms Li, said that on the day of the attack, she
and her husband fed their daughter then went to work near their house in
Haimen City, eastern China.

But Ms Li could not stop thinking about her daughter so returned home after just ten minutes.

When she arrived, a white dog with blood around its mouth came running towards her, she said.She dashed to the bedroom where she had left Qingqing - and discovered that the little girl had been dragged from her bed by the dog, which is believed to be a stray.

The right side of Qingqing's face had been shredded and her eyelid torn
off. She was carried to a local clinic by her mother but her injuries
were too severe to be treated there.

She was then transferred to the larger Nantong City No.3 People's
Hospital, where she was operated on. She is recovering from the surgery
but is suffering from a fever that is concerning her doctors.

Her plastic surgeon, Dr Sun Jiyie, said: 'This is the youngest child with the most severe injuries we have seen from a dog bite.

'If she could safely power through the critical period, we will be
planning more plastic surgery. But she is so young and the injuries are
so severe, the operations will no doubt be very difficult.'

Mrs Li, who is keeping a vigil at her daughter's bedside, said she and
her husband only recently moved to Haimen after working at a greenhouse
farm in another province for three years.

Last night Dr Zhao Xianzhong, the director of the hospital's burns and
plastic surgery department, reminded all parents never to leave their
babies and children alone.

He also issued a general warning about dogs - saying attacks in China are more common in spring and summer.

The hospital currently treats around 20 people a day for dog bites but
the figure is expected to increase in the coming weeks as temperatures
rise.

'When summer arrives, people wear less fabric, and dogs are only
interested in exposed skin,' explained Dr Zhao. 'Girls should be more
aware when they are wearing short skirts and shorts.' - Daily Mail.

On mass animal deaths and human anxieties

At first light on June 4, 2013, Steve Fradkin, a National Park Service
ecologist, led a small team down a gravel strand called Beach 4 on
Washington's Olympic coast. The group's destination was a rocky bench
known—fatefully, it would turn out—as Starfish Point. There it would
carry out an annual count of intertidal life forms as part of a
long-term survey of the Pacific shore. Conditions were perfect, the sea
calm beneath a blue sky dotted with cotton-ball clouds.

The day's beauty ended at Starfish Point. "It was a horror show,"
Fradkin told me. Instead of the usual spangling of purple, orange, and
brick-red on the rocks, many of the starfish, which are known to
biologists as sea stars, were contorted, marke­d with white lesions, or
seemingly melting into goo. "They were missing arms," Fradkin said, "and
there were even instances of arms walking around by themselves."

The team's observations are considered the first official record of an
ongoing outbreak of a sea-star wasting disease that has killed millions
of starfish from Baja California to southern Alaska, typically wiping
out more than ninety per cent of each population it strikes. It's the
greatest wildlife mass-mortality event, or "die-off," of the present
day.

Mass-mortality events are sudden, unusual crashes in a population. On
the spectrum of death—mortality's rainbow, if you will—they fill the
space between the cool regularity of background death rates and the hot
flare of species burning out into extinction. If you think that you are
hearing about them more often these days, you're probably right.
(Elizabeth Kolbert described frog and bat die-offs in a 2009 article;
her subsequent book won a Pulitzer Prize this week.) Even mass-mortality
experts struggle to parse whether we're witnessing a genuine epidemic
(more properly, an epizootic) of these events. They have also raised
another possibility: that we are in the throes of what one researcher
called an "epidemic of awareness" of spooky wildlife deaths.

Die-off reports are fertile ground for latter-day anxieties. The
events they describe tend to elude explanation, encouraging the notion
that our private theories about why they happen are as legitimate as
those of the baffled scientists. Of course, mass death also looks like
seriously bad news. While we are bombarded with stories of environmental
doom and gloom, many of the problems are effectively invisible. It's
mainly mathematical models, for example, that tell us an extinction
crisis is underway, mostly involving little-known species in
little-known places. In an atmosphere of pervasive human guilt, if not
eco-grief, it is easy to assume that wildlife mass-mortality events are
cinematically graphic manifestations—melting starfish, birds falling
from the sky—of the powerful foundational forces that drive more
abstract challenges such as climate change.

The Internet has offered a wellspring of speculation about mass wildlife
deaths. A case in point: more than four thousand red-winged blackbirds
are found dead on New Year's Day, 2011, in Beebe, Arkansas. As the story
spreads, news of other die-offs is reported from around the world. Dead
jackdaws in Sweden. Dead velvet swimming crabs in the U.K. More dead
blackbirds in Louisiana. Dead snapper in New Zealand ("many with their
eyes missing"). Five days after the initial event, a Washington Post
blogger dubs it "the Aflockalypse." The name sticks, and so does the
implication. The Web is soon abuzz with commentators linking these
occurrences to end-is-near prophecies, secret government experiments,
and the threat of ecological collapse. The National Wildlife Health
Center ultimately diagnoses the probable cause of the die-off as avian
panic, most likely triggered by loud noises—possibly fireworks—too close
to the birds' nighttime roost. Of course, nobody can say for sure.

Wildlife die-offs are an ancient phenomenon. One fossil site in Chile
revealed recurring mass marine-mammal deaths, most likely from toxic
algae blooms, dating back at least nine million years. Aristotle, in his
"Historia Animalium," in the fourth century B.C., remarked on
mass dolphin strandings as simply something that the animals were known
to do "at times." The earliest written record in American history, from
1542, by the Spanish explorer Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, appears to
indicate that Native Americans on Tampa Bay, in Florida, understood fish
die-offs—which still occur in the area today—as typical of certain
seasons.

At least in some quarters, the sudden death of large numbers of wild
animals has been read as a dire message to humanity: scientists have
pointed out that the first biblical plague of Egypt, a fish die-off in a
blood-red Nile, is an apt description of the effects of the
acidification of the river's water. Yet the widespread interpretation of
such events as signs, whether ecological or divine, that humankind's
abuse of the planet has gone too far appears to be relatively new.

Even oddball mortalities of the type that trigger apocalyptic anxiety
today don't appear to cause much stir in the historical record. In 1884,
hundreds of tons of dead fish bellied up in the lakes that surround
Madison, Wisconsin, requiring daily burials by a crew of up to
thirty-eight men with horse teams. During the "great bird shower" of
1904 in Minnesota and Iowa, millions of sparrow-like Lapland longspurs
fell from the night sky, most of them dead but some hitting the ground
as snowballs that then "hatched" live birds in the morning sun. Detailed
reports of both events exist; they document public curiosity and
conjecture, but very little sense that these die-offs represented any
judgment on society.

Even thirty years ago, the public response to an unusually extreme
mass-mortality event wasn't particularly fraught. In 1983, long-spined
sea urchins, then a common Caribbean species, began to waste away; their
bony casings soon littered shorelines from Panama to Florida. The
species had been abundant for a long time, possibly hundreds of
thousands of years, but within thirteen months its population had
declined by ninety-eight per cent. Even today, the urchins number not
much more than ten per cent of their former plenitude. Haris Lessios, a
senior staff scientist with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute,
in Panama, studied the urchin crash from the outset. He recalls little
news coverage—indeed, the New York Times reported on the
die-off only once, a year after it began—and no public interest beyond
local residents, who were happy not to contend any longer with the
urchins' painful sting. "I don't think anyone was particularly worried,"
Lessios told me. "I wasn't. I thought that within a few years things
would be back to normal."

Like the urchin die-off, the 2013 sea-star-wasting-disease outbreak had a
terrible impact over an enormous geographic range. By contrast,
however, references to melting starfish and their detached zombie limbs
appeared everywhere from National Geographic to Fox News to the
End Times Prophecy. Starfish are a beloved ocean icon, and the public
reaction was twofold: expressions of sadness, often accompanied by
offers of help (observations by "citizen scientists" contributed to what
is probably the largest data set ever assembled about a marine-animal
disease outbreak), and generalized concern that human beings must be
responsible—and might be next.

Pete Raimondi, a University of California, Santa Cruz, marine biologist
who is the principal investigator with a research group studying the
event, said that, after the news broke, he responded to hundreds of
reporters and "volumes and volumes" of calls, e-mails, blog posts, and
personal contacts from citizens. "That's the highest level of anxiety
I've ever seen," Raimondi said. "People were not only worried about the
environment, they were worried about themselves." Online, speculation
about the cause of the die-off soon focussed on radiation from the
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear-power plant, which had been badly damaged by
the tsunami that struck Japan in 2011. Raimondi recalled a phone call in
which a fearful soon-to-be father asked whether he should immediately
move his family away from the West Coast. It was one of many similarly
heartfelt calls. Researchers have found no evidence of a link between
the ongoing Fukushima disaster and the starfish die-off, Raimondi
said—"very massive sampling" indicates that the outbreak began before
waterborne radiation reached the coast. Many members of the public
remain unconvinced.

Broadly speaking, however, the gap between the public perception of
die-offs and the scientific interpretation is not so wide. Until
recently, most biologists tended to look at mass-mortality events as
isolated incidents with case-specific causes. As a result, it has been
the convention among major media sources to present die-offs as at once
mysterious and alarming, but also ordinary and even natural. The pattern
is not unlike telling ghost stories to children while scolding them for
being afraid. Several disquieting tales have already made the 2015 news
cycle, most notably hundreds of dying sea-lion pups that began turning
up on California beaches in January, and two thousand snow geese that
dropped out of the sky to die in Idaho in March. Such phenomena really
are relatively commonplace.

At the time of this writing, the National Wildlife Health Center
had recorded fifty-six mass-mortality events in the U.S. so far this
year, among them the sudden deaths of fifty black vultures in Ascension
Parish, Louisiana; thirteen hundred waterfowl in Humboldt County,
California; and two thousand bats in Pierce County, Wisconsin.

Yet recent research suggests that the perception of wildlife
die-offs as more frequent and alarming than ever might have some basis
in fact. In January, the first study ever to attempt to track trends in
mass-mortality events was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences;
the authors found that die-offs appear to be increasing in both number
and magnitude, even after attempting to correct statistically for the
fact that mass deaths are more likely to be documented today than they
were in the past. Bird die-offs, for example, have historically been
among the best represented in the scientific literature. The study's
authors had expected that an increase in the reporting of such events
would add a larger number of less dramatic cases—in which fewer birds
die—to the over-all data set, bringing down the average number of deaths
per occurrence. Instead, they found the opposite. The typical number of
bird deaths per reported die-off has risen, from about a hundred in the
nineteen-forties to some ten thousand today. The over-all number of
bird die-offs also seems to have increased. "That paper supports a lot
of what many of us have been suspecting," Jonathan Sleeman, a wildlife
epidemiologist who heads the National Wildlife Health Center, said. "I
do think we're seeing more catastrophic events."

Every biologist I spoke with who is researching mass-mortality events
said that many wildlife die-offs today really could be signals of
serious problems with the ecological fundamentals of the planet. Last
year, a team of scientists found that sea-star wasting disease is caused
by a virus-size organism (and therefore probably a virus). Given that
similar, though lesser, outbreaks have occurred in the past, the current
epizootic could be perfectly natural, nothing more than a particularly
dangerous strain of a virus. Yet sea stars are known to be maritime
canaries-in-the-coal-mine: "They're always the first ones to go,"
Raimondi said. Radiation from Japan may have been ruled out as the
epizootic's catalyst, but a long list of other big-picture environmental
stressors are under investigation for possibly having made the sea
stars more susceptible to disease, among them temperature spikes (which
may be related to climate change), ocean acidification, pollution, or
some combination of the above or other pressures. It's not crazy to
think that mass deaths of wildlife are telling us something about the
state of the world, Raimondi said, but it remains important to let the
evidence speak case by case. "If they're going to be stressed, then they
should be stressed about things that are real," he said.

If the starfish die-off proves to have been exacerbated by human causes,
could it be a warning of an imminent ecological catastrophe? The answer
may depend on your definition of catastrophe. "You're not going to go
from these really healthy, stable ecosystems to collapse," Raimondi
said. "That's not to say that things aren't going to change."

When the long-spined sea urchin crashed in the Caribbean in 1983, it led
to what scientists call a "phase shift" in the marine environment. The
urchins were important grazers of seaweed. With the urchins gone,
seaweed surged, overgrowing coral reefs. Caribbean reefs had already
been under duress from overfishing, pollution, and other factors, but
the urchin die-off appears to have been a tipping point. The most
visually spectacular shallow-water reefs in the Caribbean today are less
impressive than even an average reef of thirty years ago.

Oddly, what Raimondi called the "worst-case scenario" for the sea-star
die-off is the opposite of what happened in the Caribbean. On the
Pacific coast, the big, habitat-forming structures are not coral reefs
but underwater "forests" of seaweed. Starfish eat sea urchins; without
them, urchins may mow down the kelp forests. That in turn can call up a
roster of changes that range from more frequent eagle attacks on
seabirds to higher waves striking the shore: not the end of the world,
but a different world—and, ecologically speaking, a poorer one.

It might not happen that way, of course. Nature is full of surprises.
Observers on the West Coast this spring are reporting more baby
starfish, many no bigger than a fingernail, at more sites than at any
time in the past fifteen years. The best current explanation for this
supernova of cuteness is that the onset of wasting disease triggered
starfish to reproduce intensively before dying. "If they survive, it
means recovery may be underway," Raimondi said of the tiny sea stars.
"If they grow up and start wasting away, well, that's a different
story." These days, this may qualify as hope. - The New Yorker.

Man survives second bear attack in 4 years at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington: 'I just had this deja vu'

Dead bear

The chances of being attacked by a bear are extremely slim. It's even
less likely it would happen twice. But the victim of an attack last week
also came face-to-face with an aggressive bear four years ago. And both
times, it was a fight for his life.

"Multiple attacks on my shoulders, he bit me on my head, my arms, my hand," said Bob, who asked us not to use his last name.

Bob describes receiving more than 40 bites, severe claw swipes and deep bruises in a black bear attack last week.

"It would whip around, do this 180 and go for my leg, my shoulders, my
head, and just come in and bite me again, and I would just try to nail
it when it came in," he said.

Bob says he was running on a well-used trail in the woods surrounding
Joint Base Lewis McChord when his dog Abby spooked the bear. As it
charged in his direction, Bob grabbed a four foot long tree branch and
readied himself for a fight.

It was a rare scenario. But remarkably, not for Bob.

WATCH: Bear attack in Washington.

"It was just running straight for me. The dog went running by me, and I just had this deja vu," he said.

Four years ago - running on the same trail, with the same dog - Bob was attacked by a bear.

"It sort of jumped at me, grabbed my by my belly and my rear end and
took me down, bit me and mauled me a couple times," he said of the 2011
attack. "I just rolled up in a ball and stayed still."

Eventually the bear left, but Bob still has scars from all the bites and scratches.

Even seasoned Wildlife Officers are stunned.

"The odds of being attacked once are very slim," said Sgt. Ted
Jackson of WDFW. "The odds of being attacked twice, I would say it's
impossible, last week. But it happened. I just can't even calculate the
odds of being attacked once, let alone twice."

Wildlife officers never found that first bear. For six straight days, a
team of agents has been pushing through the woods, determined not to let
this one slip away. They wanted to match the DNA before killing the
bear. But when some hounds got the bear's scent, it turned on them. They
couldn't get the bear cornered to safely tranquilize it and decided
they needed to shoot to kill.

They successfully took down the 300-pound bear. Agents will run tests,
but they're confident it's the right one. Bob wonders if it could even
be the same bear attacked him four years ago. Either way, he is relieved
this is over.

"He was definitely after my head. So I was trying to protect everything
up here and I was holding onto that stick and that was about the only
thing that saved me," he said. "I still say it. My friends are still
saying it. "Why me?"

There's no answer. There also won't be a third time.

"I love it up there," Bob said of the woods around JBLM. "But no. I'm
just getting too old to fight 'em anymore, to tell you the truth." - KOMO News.

Sloth bear severely mauls 50-year-old woman in Dahod, India

Sloth bear

A 50-year-old woman was mauled by a sloth bear near Dhanpur taluka in
Dahod district on Sunday morning. Rauli Baria was rushed to SSG Hospital
with severe injuries to her face and skull.

Rauli and her husband Varsan Baria are farmers and residents of Jojgam
village. The incident occurred when the couple had gone to their fields
to collect mahua flowers. The bear was hiding behind the thicket fencing and it attacked Rauli,who was close by. A scared Varsan fled from the spot.

The bear tore into her skull damaging a major part of her brain. Sources
in the hospital said Rauli's eyes and nose has been irreversibly
damaged. She has also suffered wounds on her neck, back and abdomen. She
was admitted in a critical condition and is still in danger. Her
husband suffered minor abrasions and was discharged after first aid.

The farm where they were attacked is near Ratanmahal Sloth Bear Sanctuary. District
forest officials said that while two bear attacks in the area were
registered in March, this is the first severe attack of the year.

60,000 birds to be killed due to new outbreak of avian flu in Wisconsin, United States

In this Nov. 2, 2005 file photo, turkeys are pictured at a turkey farm near Sauk Centre, Minn. AP

A bird flu that’s deadly to poultry was confirmed to have been found in a northern Chippewa County farm Tuesday, county officials said.

The latest outbreak of the highly pathogenic H5N2 strain has been identified at an undisclosed turkey farm housing 60,000 birds. All of the remaining birds will be killed to prevent any spread of the disease.

Authorities have stressed there has been no risk to public health and no danger to the food supply from the Avian flu outbreak.

Jen Rombalski, director-health officer for the Chippewa County Department of Public Health, said the department was notified Tuesday by the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection about the bird flu being on the farm when test results came back from the lab.

She said in cases such as this, all bird farms within a 10-mile radius will also be quarantined. She said that amounts to two other farms, both of which are in Chippewa County.

“This is a sad situation for the farm owner, and a concern for many people,” she said, noting however that "this particular strain has not crossed over into humans.”

She said the DATCP classifies it as “a very low risk to the general public,” but it is not termed no risk. Rombalski said the individuals at the farm will be closely monitored, and they have been working closely with the public health department. As a precaution, they will be taking medication to prevent them from becoming sick.

State agriculture officials this month detected the virus for the first time in Wisconsin. It has been found in three flocks affecting tens of thousands of chickens and turkeys.

This past week the outbreak was discovered at a farm with 126,000 turkeys in Barron County, at a farm that belongs to Jennie-O Turkey Store.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture confirmed the Barron County case was the same H5N2 strain that has cost Midwest and Ontario, Canada producers more than 2 million birds since early March.

“We aren’t really sure how this farm became contaminated. It’s not near the one in Barron County,” Rombalski said.

She said that if someone were to see any sick or dying birds, they are asked to report it by calling 800-572-8981.

Chippewa County Administrator Frank Pascarella said the county’s Public Health Department, Land Management along with a state agency have been informed about the outbreak. He said the departments will follow a protocol in destroying animals infected with the Avian flu, which he said the departments will monitor.

On Monday, Gov. Scott Walker declared a state of emergency, authorizing the Wisconsin National Guard to assist authorities responding to the bird flu in Jefferson, Juneau and Barron counties. That includes helping with the response and clean up once the infected birds are killed.

Walker says the state must act “quickly and efficiently to contain the outbreak and protect domestic poultry.” - Lacrosse Tribune.

Large amount of dead fish washing ashore on Lake Champlain in Vermont, United States

The seasonal die-off of alewives usually happens after the melting of ice at Lake Champlain. Alewives may be ill-equipped to handle
the instabilities in the lake's temperatures. (Photo : Ken Lund | Flickr)

This is not the first time that a great number of small alewives are floating up dead or washing on the shorelines of Lake Champlain in northwest Vermont. This will not be the last as well.

These seasonal die-offs of alewives on the shores usually happen after the melting of ice at Lake Champlain.

Shawn Good, a fisheries biologist at the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department, noted that neither the water nor any form of pollutant is the culprint. The biology of the alewife itself is the cause of its death.

Good explained that alewives are not native to Lake Champlain. One theory as to how the fish colonized the lake is through human intervention. Someone must have utilized alewives as bait years ago, and now the population has become uncontrollably abundant.

Alewives may be ill-equipped to handle the instabilities in Lake Champlain's temperatures, particularly in the colder months, Good said. When this invasive species die, it creates "a void in the fish community in terms of other fish having something to eat."

Good sees the die-offs of alewives from previous years as a "warning sign" and an obvious reminder that the public should never illegally transport fresh fish from its natural environment into a different body of water just to create fishing opportunities. Additionally, the human-aided migration of living fish can have major impacts on natural ecosystems.

The trout and salmon in Lake Champlain have become dependent on these small invaders as an important source of diet. Recreational fishing can be deeply affected if the salmon and trout cannot hunt the alewives for food any longer because of the die-offs.

"We haven't seen that here," Good told New England Cable News. "It's just something we have witnessed in the Great Lakes, and we hope it doesn't happen here."

On Tuesday, fish and wildlife officials were in Milton supplying Lake Champlain with fresh salmon, as part of an ongoing scheme to restore the fish populace in the freshwater lake. - Tech Times.

Hundreds of dead fish washing ashore in the waters of Hulan, China

Recently, the Harbin Hulan area fish farmers to the local environmental protection departments, which are connected with the Hulan River waters suddenly turned black stinking of fish ponds, cause of massive fish kills in ponds. 20th, the local environmental protection department water quality sampling inspections of polluted waters, and said it would investigate the sources of these pollutants.

"Now, a nets caught nearly all dead fish, where muddy waters and closed nearby fish pond water quality in great contrast. As soon as this situation continues, the consequences would be unthinkable, near waters but also suffered many fish-eating animals may disappear. "As far as Mr fish huxiao introduces, this referring to the Hulan River in fish ponds, many years production has been very good, half a month ago, he found that the water becomes more and more cloudy, then there are a lot of fish were killed, in recent days the water color and darker, and loud smell dead fish attracts many water birds to Peck. According to Hulan EPA staff told, they followed raised fish households came to near Hulan old of Hulan two River bridge sections, distance a at tens of thousands of square meters of ponds also has a distance, will can smell to water distributed out of stench flavor, arrived in Waterside Shi, found this should clear of water has into black, in Waterside and water Shang has many died fish, these fish maximum of has half meters more.

Hulan District Environmental Protection Bureau said that water quality sampling in this Council in the last quarter area found no problems as regards the sources of these contaminants, nails will be determined after collecting water samples for testing, and investigating pollutant sources, together with relevant departments, the polluters are punished accordingly. - Ifeng. [Translated]

April 22, 2015 - SOLOMON ISLANDS - A strong earthquake off of the Solomon Islands Wednesday afternoon, but does not expected to pose a tsunami threat to Hawaii.

The
preliminary magnitude 6.3 temblor hit 98 miles south-southeast of Lata,
Solomon Islands at 12:57 p.m. at a depth of 45 miles, according to the
U.S. Geological Survey.

Location of the earthquake. Earthquake 3D

There were no advisories issued by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center.

No injuries were immediately reported.

The Solomon Islands are a sovereign country consisting of a large
number of islands in Oceania, lying to the east of Papua New
Guinea and covering a land area of 28,400 square kilometers.

USGS shakemap intensity.

They are located on the eastern margin of the Australia plate,
which is one of the most seismically active areas of the world
due to high rates of convergence between the Australia and
Pacific tectonic plates. - Star Advertiser. [Edited]

Tectonic Summary - Seismotectonics of the Eastern Margin of the Australia Plate

The eastern margin of the Australia plate is one of the most
sesimically active areas of the world due to high rates of convergence
between the Australia and Pacific plates. In the region of New Zealand,
the 3000 km long Australia-Pacific plate boundary extends from south
of Macquarie Island to the southern Kermadec Island chain. It includes
an oceanic transform (the Macquarie Ridge), two oppositely verging
subduction zones (Puysegur and Hikurangi), and a transpressive
continental transform, the Alpine Fault through South Island, New
Zealand.

Since 1900 there have been 15 M7.5+ earthquakes
recorded near New Zealand. Nine of these, and the four largest,
occurred along or near the Macquarie Ridge, including the 1989 M8.2
event on the ridge itself, and the 2004 M8.1 event 200 km to the west
of the plate boundary, reflecting intraplate deformation. The largest
recorded earthquake in New Zealand itself was the 1931 M7.8 Hawke's Bay
earthquake, which killed 256 people. The last M7.5+ earthquake along
the Alpine Fault was 170 years ago; studies of the faults' strain
accumulation suggest that similar events are likely to occur again.

North of New Zealand, the Australia-Pacific boundary stretches east of
Tonga and Fiji to 250 km south of Samoa. For 2,200 km the trench is
approximately linear, and includes two segments where old (greater than 120 Myr)
Pacific oceanic lithosphere rapidly subducts westward (Kermadec and
Tonga). At the northern end of the Tonga trench, the boundary curves
sharply westward and changes along a 700 km-long segment from
trench-normal subduction, to oblique subduction, to a left lateral
transform-like structure.

USGS plate tectonics for the region.

Australia-Pacific convergence rates
increase northward from 60 mm/yr at the southern Kermadec trench to 90
mm/yr at the northern Tonga trench; however, significant back arc
extension (or equivalently, slab rollback) causes the consumption rate
of subducting Pacific lithosphere to be much faster. The spreading rate
in the Havre trough, west of the Kermadec trench, increases northward
from 8 to 20 mm/yr. The southern tip of this spreading center is
propagating into the North Island of New Zealand, rifting it apart. In
the southern Lau Basin, west of the Tonga trench, the spreading rate
increases northward from 60 to 90 mm/yr, and in the northern Lau Basin,
multiple spreading centers result in an extension rate as high as 160
mm/yr. The overall subduction velocity of the Pacific plate is the
vector sum of Australia-Pacific velocity and back arc spreading
velocity: thus it increases northward along the Kermadec trench from 70
to 100 mm/yr, and along the Tonga trench from 150 to 240 mm/yr.

The
Kermadec-Tonga subduction zone generates many large earthquakes on the
interface between the descending Pacific and overriding Australia
plates, within the two plates themselves and, less frequently, near the
outer rise of the Pacific plate east of the trench. Since 1900, 40
M7.5+ earthquakes have been recorded, mostly north of 30°S. However, it
is unclear whether any of the few historic M8+ events that have
occurred close to the plate boundary were underthrusting events on the
plate interface, or were intraplate earthquakes. On September 29, 2009,
one of the largest normal fault (outer rise) earthquakes ever recorded
(M8.1) occurred south of Samoa, 40 km east of the Tonga trench,
generating a tsunami that killed at least 180 people.

Across
the North Fiji Basin and to the west of the Vanuatu Islands, the
Australia plate again subducts eastwards beneath the Pacific, at the
North New Hebrides trench. At the southern end of this trench, east of
the Loyalty Islands, the plate boundary curves east into an oceanic
transform-like structure analogous to the one north of Tonga.

Australia-Pacific convergence rates increase northward from 80 to 90
mm/yr along the North New Hebrides trench, but the Australia plate
consumption rate is increased by extension in the back arc and in the
North Fiji Basin. Back arc spreading occurs at a rate of 50 mm/yr along
most of the subduction zone, except near ~15°S, where the
D'Entrecasteaux ridge intersects the trench and causes localized
compression of 50 mm/yr in the back arc. Therefore, the Australia plate
subduction velocity ranges from 120 mm/yr at the southern end of the
North New Hebrides trench, to 40 mm/yr at the D'Entrecasteaux
ridge-trench intersection, to 170 mm/yr at the northern end of the
trench.

Large earthquakes are common along the North New
Hebrides trench and have mechanisms associated with subduction
tectonics, though occasional strike slip earthquakes occur near the
subduction of the D'Entrecasteaux ridge. Within the subduction zone 34
M7.5+ earthquakes have been recorded since 1900. On October 7, 2009, a
large interplate thrust fault earthquake (M7.6) in the northern North
New Hebrides subduction zone was followed 15 minutes later by an even
larger interplate event (M7.8) 60 km to the north. It is likely that
the first event triggered the second of the so-called earthquake
"doublet".

April 22, 2015 - CHILE - Volcano Calbuco in
southern Chile erupted for the first time in at least four decades on
Wednesday, sending a thick plume of ash and smoke several kilometers
(miles) into the sky, local television images showed.

Chile's Onemi emergency office declared a red alert following the eruption, which occurred about 1,000 km (625 miles) south of the capital Santiago near the tourist town of Puerto Varas.

Hundreds of people are being evacuated in southern Chile following a massive eruption of the Calbuco volcano.

The government has declared a red alert, as thick clouds of ash and smoke shot up several kilometers into the sky.

The volcano is located near the tourist location of Puerto Varas,
about 1,000 km (625 miles) south of the nation’s capital
Santiago.

A total of 1,500 people are reportedly being evacuated from the
affected area.

“There are a lot of people out in the streets, many heading
to the gas stations to fill up on gas,” a resident of Puerto
Varas, Derek Way, told Reuters.

About 1,500 people were being evacuated, authorities said.

"The eruption happened about half an hour ago. There are a lot of people out in the streets, many heading to the gas stations to fill up on gas," Derek Way, a resident of Puerto Varas, told Reuters.

WATCH: Calbuco erupts in Chile.

Chile, on the Pacific 'Rim of Fire', has the second largest chain of volcanoes in the world after Indonesia, including around 500 that are potentially active.

In March, volcano Villarrica, also in southern Chile, erupted in spectacular fashion, sending a plume of ash and lava high into the sky, but quickly subsided. - Yahoo.

Calbuco viewed from the north alongside Road 225 on the shores of Llanquihue Lake.

Calbuco has had at least 10 eruptions since 1837. The most recent
eruption was April 22 2015, the first since 1972. One of the largest
historical eruptions in southern Chile took place there in 1893–1894.
Violent eruptions ejected 30-cm bombs to distances of 8 km from the
crater, accompanied by voluminous hot lahars.

Los Lagos, Chile

Calbuco viewed from Osorno volcano. (28-Jul-2006)

Strong explosions occurred in April 1917, and a lava dome formed in the crater accompanied by hot lahars. Another short explosive eruption in January 1929 also included an apparent pyroclastic flow and a lava
flow. The last major eruption of Calbuco, in 1961, sent ash columns
12–15 km high and produced plumes that dispersed mainly to the SE and
two lava flows were also emitted. There was a minor, 4-hour eruption on
August 26, 1972. Strong fumarolic emission from the main crater was
observed on August 12, 1996. - Wikipedia.

A few hospital workers who witnessed the incident said it was frightening.

"It's scary because they just [repaved] this street after putting in new
pipes," said Paulie Johnson, who works in the security office at
Brookdale's Urgent Care Center. "It looks good from the surface, but we
don't know what's underneath."

A sinkhole in the front yard of a home in Easley’s Oak Creek subdivision(Photo: Ron Barnett / Staff)

A homeowners group in Easley’s Oak Creek subdivision has filed a federal lawsuit against the city, claiming that the crumbling storm water drainage system in their neighborhood is causing a sewer line to fail.

The action comes just as the city has inked a $1 million contract to install a new drainage system to fix gaping sinkholes that have plagued the neighborhood for decades because of legal questions over who was responsible.

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Anderson, asks that the court issue the city civil penalties of at least $1 million under the federal Clean Water Act.

It also seeks an injunction to “prevent any work on the storm water system that is not fully in compliance with the laws, regulations and standards of the USA.”

Easley Mayor Larry Bagwell said on Monday he hasn’t seen the lawsuit and couldn’t comment directly on it.

He said, however, that the city, along with Easley Combined Utilities and the state Department of Health and Environmental Control, did tests using underground cameras and found no sewer leaks.

Cassandra Harris, a spokeswoman for DHEC, confirmed “No sewer line breaks or leaks were found” in camera tests done on March 2.

A pollution-testing station downstream has reported that bacteria levels are within acceptable limits, DHEC said.

Luc de Gaspe Beaubien, leader of the homeowners group that filed the lawsuit, said camera tests are not sufficient to detect sewer line leakage. Smoke tests and electrical conductivity tests, he said, are needed to determine that.

The lawsuit includes as an exhibit a request from the city in 2010 to borrow $2.5 million for Oak Creek sewer and drainage improvements from the Clean Water State Revolving Fund, a low-interest funding source administered by DHEC.

In answering what water quality parameters the project would address, the city listed “fecal and storm water runoff pollutants.”

The application says, “The existing corrugated metal storm drain system has failed, causing subsurface erosion that is jeopardizing the existing sewer line, causing failure in that pipe resulting in contamination and degrading the water quality…”

DHEC spokesman Jim Beasley said the city notified DHEC in 2012 that it “had changed the scope of the project and decided to self-fund, therefore the lending process did not go any further.”

City officials questioned Monday said they couldn’t remember the specifics of the application.

Bagwell said the city last week approved a contract for $1,080,000 with Stone Excavating of Anderson to rip out the old storm drainage system and replace it with concrete piping, and to repave everyone’s driveway that the project cuts through.

After years of wrangling, all 21 homeowners — except de Gaspe Beaubien — have agreed to the city’s terms, which include giving them a voucher to repair landscaping damage to their front yards.

According to condemnation documents filed at the Pickens County courthouse, the city intends to pay de Gaspe Beaubien $2,600 for damages to his property, a figure he says is far below the actual value.

The condemnation proceedings won’t hold up the project, the mayor said.

Residents who have been at odds with the city for years over the issue are skeptical that the project the city plans will solve the problem.

“Personally I’m just going to wait and see how the chips will fall, and I’ll believe it when I see it,” said Jodie Dudash, who lost a legal fight with the city over the issue in 2006.

At the root of the legal morass is the question of who is responsible for fixing the problem.

The developer died years ago. And although the city accepted the streets into its system, the drainage system runs through private property and isn’t owned by the city.

The city’s plan calls for replacing the leaky 1,548-foot pipe along Creek Drive with a 48-inch concrete pipe that city officials say should be sufficient to drain the worst storms in a 10- to 25-year period.

The lawsuit claims that the proposed repair job, “does not meet federal nor state nor county requirements and guidelines; to include the 100-year flood plain requirements.”

Bagwell and Tommy Holcombe, city building official, said they believe the project the City Council has approved will solve “the immediate problem” and could be upgraded if needed.

“He is wanting a Cadillac and we’re wanting a car with good gas mileage,” Bagwell said. - Greenville Online.

Sinkholes develop after rainy season in Warren County, Kentucky

A pothole caused by rain is repaired on Monday, April 20, 2015, on Gotts Hydro Road. (Austin Anthony/photo@bgdailynews.com)

The rainy season in Warren County has again led to troubles with sinkholes, though as of yet, no Corvettes have been endangered.

Both the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet District 3 and the city of Bowling Green have had road closures this week because of sinkholes opening.

The state Department of Highways closed a section of Gotts-Hydro Road in Warren County between Goshen Church South Road and Carl Jordan Road on Monday after a small sinkhole formed.

The road was reopened Monday afternoon after the sinkhole was repaired.

The city of Bowling Green closed a portion of Chestnut Street on Monday because of a sinkhole collapse. One lane will be closed to through traffic between Third Avenue and Short Street through Friday, according to a city news release.

Wes Watt, public information officer for the state Department of Highways, Bowling Green office, said he has rarely seen sinkholes that required road closures.

But the rainier the season, the more likely it is that sinkholes will develop, he said.

“It definitely could be an issue, especially given our history with sinkholes in this entire area,” Watt said.

In February 2014, a sinkhole opened under the Skydome at the National Corvette Museum, swallowing eight Corvettes on display.

Josh Moore, Warren County Public Works director, said the county hasn’t received an abnormal number of calls about sinkholes this season, but they tend to be unpredictable.

The county only repairs sinkholes that are along county rights-of-way or on a drainage easement, he said. That policy went into effect in June.

An exception is if the sinkholes have previously been repaired by the county or were in the process of being repaired, Moore said.

The county has one large sinkhole-related project that needs to be completed, which is the repair of a series of sinkholes that opened in a retention basin in the Ewing Ford Place neighborhood, he said.

The county has another 10 to 15 small sinkholes to be filled in, Moore said.

Bowling Green has 17 work orders associated with some type of sinkhole report, said Bobby Phelps, public works operations manager with the city.

He said the amount of rain in the area, coupled with a high rate of rainfall, means drainage structures can be overwhelmed. That can accelerate the sinkhole problem.

Bowling Green City Commission will consider accepting a bid of $53,000 from Fletcher Excavation LLC of Bowling Green tonight for sinkhole repairs.

Phelps said city workers have prioritized some of the worst sinkholes and hope the private contractor can decrease the number of sinkholes that have yet to be repaired.

In addition to sinkholes, road departments in the region are working to fill in potholes caused by harsh winter conditions.

Watt said District 3 crews have been busy patching potholes, but some of that work has been delayed because of wet weather.

Potholes can be reported by calling the district office or going to the district website, he said. The Bowling Green office can be reached at 270-746-7898 or online at transportation.ky.gov/ district-3/Pages/default.aspx.

Jerry Young, Warren County Road supervisor, said county road crews are patching potholes every day. Potholes can be reported by calling 270-843-8328.

Jeff Lashlee, city public works director, said the city has a road crew that repairs potholes on a regular basis. - BG Daily News.

Northern Kentucky mayors want growing number of sinkholes fixed

A group of mayors in northern Kentucky are seeking a solution to the growing number of sinkholes along streets caused by crumbling underground sewer lines.

The Kentucky Enquirer (http://cin.ci/1bkrb2Y) reports the Kenton Mayors Group met Saturday and approved a resolution that asks Sanitation District 1 to restart a program it ended in July 2013 that helped repair crumbling sewer laterals and streets.

The mayors say in the resolution that the sinkholes, the lateral breaks and the crumbling streets are matters of public health and safety.

Residents have been responsible for repairs since the service ended, but street fixes haven't been consistent.

Sanitation District Director David Rager said the service was eliminated due to budget cuts.

"We did do the repairs for about five years," Rager said. "We averaged about 75 repairs a year across Campbell, Boone and Kenton counties." He said the program cost the district spent about $600,000 annually.

Covington City Manager Larry Klein said the city has so many sinkholes caused by the lateral line problems it has run out of steel sheets to cover them.

Although it has been harder hit because it has more older homes, some mayors said they expect the issue to spread.

"This will eventually be an issue for everyone," said Independence Mayor Chris Reinersman, who noted his city has a fair share of older homes as well as new. "I feel like there is too much risk to the individual property owners, as well as the taxpayers in general, to leave repair of sewer laterals in the right of way up to the property owner."

Rager said officials are currently discussing budget projections for next year. - Kentucky.

Louisiana to include sinkholes in disaster planning

A
Bayou Corne sinkhole, shown here, prompted the evacuation of residents.
A new hazard mitigation plan would map the 2-mile radius around salt
domes to help predict sink holes.(Photo: AP)

Sinkholes will be recognized as threats in the state’s updated hazard mitigation plan.

The the state is working on a five-year update to its hazard mitigation plan, which must be in place to receive federal money after natural and man-made disasters.

For the first time, the state will map salt domes and their surrounding 2-mile radius in each parish.

“That’s the best way they can predict if a sinkhole might happen within the parish,” said Lauren Stevens, a project manager with the Baton Rouge-based Stephenson Disaster Management Institute, which is compiling the plan.

Salt domes are pockets of salt deep in the ground that are sometimes drilled out and used to store crude oil, natural gas or other material.

A failed salt dome cavern is suspected of causing a 29-acre sinkhole to form in Bayou Corne in Assumption Parish in August 2012.

When it was discovered, 350 residents were advised to evacuate.

There are 16 salt domes identified in Lafourche Parish.

Local governments will now have to mitigate for those potential sinkholes under the new plan, said Chris Boudreaux, the parish’s director of homeland security and emergency preparedness.

Boudreaux learned about sinkhole causes and their aftermath by helping his brother, John Boudreaux, who is the director of homeland security and emergency preparedness in Assumption Parish throughout the disaster.

There is not much government can do to prevent existing salt domes from becoming sink holes because the drilling has already taken place, he said.

April 22, 2015 - FLORIDA, UNITED STATES - Parts of Miami-Dade County's skyline was hidden from view Monday as
smoke from a growing 1,850-acre wildfire loomed over portions of the
Florida county.

What started as a nonthreatening and seemingly shrinking grass fire on
Sunday, consuming fewer than 100 acres according to Miami-Dade Fire
Rescue Battalion Chief Al Cruz, grew to be more than 10 times that
within the next 24 hours.

By Monday night, the fire had burned nearly 2,000 acres and was 50% contained, the fire department said.